After getting 150 accolades from adoring fans, Wil Wheaton wrote that he wanted to pitch this piece to This American Life. So I gave him a little advice on pitching to them. My comment was at 1:47 p.m., his response at 4:15 p.m. — scroll waayyy wayyy down. I’m trying very hard not to let my twelve-year-old inner Trekkie overwhelm me at this point. I can’t afford to spontaneously wet my pants.
Who knows how serious he actually was about pitching to TAL. His site does describe him as “actor and writer Wil Wheaton” nowadays. I was under the impression that his geekitude helped him earn his stripes (and ditch the alt.wesley.crusher.die.die.die stigma) in the Slashdot-oriented community which probably makes up most of his site’s hits nowadays — why not “actor and programmer/hacker/code poet?” What does Wil want out of life — does he secretly yearn to be a novelist? Or what does this tell us about the status of writing in the US today? Are blogs the sign and standard-bearer of a renaissance of American graphomania? Everyone wants to write the Great American Novel…
One more thought: Those 150 love-posts illustrate something I’ve been noticing, namely that the standard of “good writing” for many people of our generation is based on the presence of a whole lot of references to toys and products and candy and other consumables “we” remember from childhood. Ability to evoke a collective memory of the meaning of one doll or action figure within its own commercially-developed pantheon is at a premium.
I don’t know whether to say that this is going to mean that the written record of our experiences is going to ultimately prove ephemeral or not. After all, in another twenty years there could be another mass-marketed Star Wars nostalgia push, and the kids who head out to see Attack of the Clones later this month could end up marveling at how well the bloggers of our generation captured their own experiences, 20 years earlier.
I’m going to go play with my cornhusk dolls and stick horse now. Or maybe some pebbles. I’ll trade you the cluster bomb I just found for a spoiled food packet… enough, enough.
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